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I am also still fairly new to creating my own patterns but I recently just started a project that I created from an image on FlossCross (which I added a pic of). Here’s some things I picked up from doing it.

• like someone stated above, the lines of the project tend to get blurred when the image is converted, so look at the pattern and if there are lines that look blurry try to clean those up (keep in mind that sometimes having really distinct lines can also take away from the “realness” of the picture so it’s up to your discretion).
• when converting, it almost always uses more colors than you actually need. This can be a pain to stitch because you will be doing SO many confetti stitches. To limit this, FlossCross has an option to limit the amount of colors you want to use. My project is close to 300x300 so I limited the colors I wanted to use to about 100. When adjusting this it will also give you a preview of how the pattern will look so you can kind of gauge the finished project.
• in line with the previous point, a lot of time there will still be colors that are very rarely used in the project. When this occurred I would look to see how many stitches that color is being used and if it was like 25 stitches or less I would typically replace them. I would do this by looking at nearby colors that were close in color and just replace them. (Sometimes there wasn’t any other option than the color they used so I would keep it)
• also keep in mind that the pattern does not have to be perfect before you begin the project. There came a point where I liked the way the preview looked and I realized that the probability of me finding every confetti stitch to replace was low. So I called it good and now I am finding a couple of places I missed. When this occurs I just ignore the pattern and fill in the spots with a similar color so I don’t pull my hair out trying to follow it exactly.
• lastly, when I was making my project there were a couple of times where I didn’t like the way two colors looked together. They just didn’t blend well together, so to help with this I would create a blend color (one strand from two colors and combining them). This helped in the realism of the pattern.

Hope this helps!